The Phone Call
by Milo Pressman
Summary: Jack needs courage to call Kate after his first return from Mexico. Based on the earlier


PART I  
  
Jack sat in his office looking at the phone as if it held clues about what he should say when she answered, if and when he summoned up the nerve to actually call her. If she was even there. If she took the call. The feeling of being sixteen again and trying to work up the nerve to call a girl was not pleasant. Especially since he'd lived with Kate, for God's sake, for almost two years. And now his palms were sweaty and he was rehearsing conversations in his mind. It was 5:15. Probably too late. She probably had plans for tonight anyway.  
  
What were his plans? The thought made him smile. Was the four-day old Chinese food crammed into the refrigerator section of the mini-bar still safe to eat? Was there a game on tonight? Did he care which sport or which team it was? He'd turn it on regardless, just for background noise. And he had shopping to do, he thought grimly. A couple of six-packs, some microwave popcorn, a weeks' worth of heroin, shaving cream. He'd go back to that poor excuse for a bar he'd visited already, what, twice in the last two weeks? And that was it, he'd have to find a new dealer somewhere else, didn't want to establish a predictable pattern. Shouldn't be too hard: he knew now where all of it came from, who sold crap and who didn't, their distribution networks and major suppliers down to which gangs controlled sales at the street level in different parts of LA. Just don't get recognized because Hector would pay very good money to find out where he went to score. He just had to deal with the supply issue until he had a chance and the time and the energy to take the whole thing on. Then a bad week or so and he'd be all right again. Maybe he should wait until then to call her.  
  
If he met her, what in the world would he talk to her about? He'd been gone almost a year. The prep work and then being inserted in the Javier cartel and establishing his rep and moving on to the Salazars, like a baseball player moving up from AAA to the majors. What could he say? He didn't want to hear about her new boyfriend, and he was sure she had one. It was inconceivable that someone like Kate could walk around for a year and not catch someone's eye; the men of America weren't that stupid. He didn't want to think about somebody else taking care of her, learning about her, seeing her smile, waking up next to her. He got up restlessly and walked over to the side chair by the conference table. They didn't even have their old disagreements to talk about anymore. There was nothing holding them together, just something that used to be there. Some memories. That was it.  
  
For a while, when he was gone, he'd tried to hold onto something with her. When he was alone, at night, when it was quiet, he'd allowed himself to go back and remember one thing, one conversation or one day or one night with her, and he'd held on to that one thing and examined it and polished it and turned it around for a while, and it had helped.  
  
But then as things went on, and he got in deeper, and he did what he needed to do...when he thought of her all he could imagine was what she would say if she knew about his days' activities. And soon he couldn't face the thought of what she would say if she knew, if she'd seen. And so he didn't take the thoughts out any more. In fact, he buried them as far down and as deep as they could possibly go, until everything he knew or thought about was narrowed down to the job, to keeping his cover tight, to finding out what he needed to know to betray the people he worked with and ate with and lived with every day. Even the people who had covered his back and saved his life. Once the memories were inaccessible, then he could do it. He could be as hard as he needed to be. Then very little touched him anymore. And what did touch him he took care of with the needle, and that helped bury things too.  
  
And when she returned the favor, and asked him if he'd met anyone, what was he going to say about Claudia? How, exactly, did one explain someone like Claudia to someone like Kate? He could just imagine it. "Yes, I had a lover while I was gone, Kate. Actually, she lived with my boss. I was the guy she had on the side. We would sneak around behind his back, because if he'd found out he would have shot both of us."  
  
That was one way of looking at the truth of it, but it wasn't everything at all. It made her sound like a tramp and him sound like an opportunistic creep who'd just wanted to get laid. In his whole life he'd never slept with another man's wife or girlfriend, but he'd done it now. (Well, what hadn't he done, now?) And he'd done it because he'd wanted and needed her in a determined, an almost desperate way he'd never wanted Kate or his wife or...anyone else. Try explaining that one. He'd risked his life to be with her, and she'd done the same for him. He couldn't make Kate understand how having Claudia had saved what was left of him after months of working for Ramon, not without also explaining what working for Ramon involved. He'd go to her when he'd just finished a job (if they were lucky and Hector was out of town, or even just away for a few hours), sometimes feeling sick to his stomach with shame, and the adrenaline still pumping through him, and he'd go to her and she'd make him feel like he was a human being again. And he'd left her there .  
Jack walked back over to the desk and started straightening up, putting papers in piles, throwing out empty coffee cups, putting pens and pencils away. The hardest part was that it all came back to him. He'd told Kate that it was time for her to move on, that he couldn't give her what she needed or wanted or deserved. And now he was going to have to face it: that was exactly what she had done. Assuming it was one thing but now it was time to actually have it confirmed.  
  
The thing was, neither of them had ever said to the other "I don't love you anymore". Never. For them it had always been an issue of "I don't love you enough", and most of the time...ok, all of the time...it had been Jack who was saying it. A question of whether they could live together, whether they wanted to do the same things with their lives, whether she could stand the separations, the tension he radiated that came from the constant danger he was in, and his periodic, silent retreats into his shell. And then there was something he couldn't go beyond anymore. The thought of losing anyone else he loved paralyzed him. So he could only go so far with Kate and then he had to stop. He only felt comfortable living in the present, without commitment or even discussion of anything long range. His comfort zone started getting shaky around six months out. Kate had to know what the roadmap was. And she wanted a family of her own.  
  
He decided that he needed to get this over with, to call her and see how she was doing and then he'd know it was really, finally, over. And then he could focus again. Because there were other things he needed to do.  
  
He dialed Kate's office number. Not the private line, the public one. What if he used the other one and said "Hi Kate, its me, Jack." and she said, "Jack who?" Better to have her secretary pick it up, give Kate a chance to think for a moment before she had to talk to him. Maybe she'd just tell the secretary to tell him she was out. Then the secretary put him through.  
  
"Kate, is now a good time? Its me, Jack." The line was quiet for a moment.  
  
"You are not going to believe this" she answered, "but I was just thinking about you. Of course it's a good time. Are you here? Are you back? Are you all right?"  
  
"I'm in LA and I'm fine". (Not a complete lie. She'd meant "Are you calling me from a hospital somewhere?" By that standard, he was fine.)  
  
"How are you, Kate?"  
  
"Strung out from a really bad day, but its starting to look up." He smiled. It was an old joke between them.  
  
"I was wondering, if you haven't got other plans, maybe you'd like to get together for a drink?"  
  
She mentioned a restaurant they'd gone to a lot, a place that had live music on the weekends and decent food.  
  
"Should I pick you up?" he asked.  
  
"Better if both of us drove there. Dad's in the office today too."  
  
"Good point". The sight of Jack Bauer set Bob Warner's teeth on edge. Too many bad memories about the worst day in the man's life, of CTU, of his other daughter, Marie, were permanently connected in Bob's mind to Jack Bauer. Much better not to risk seeing Bob, who's office was down the hall from Kate's.  
  
"I'll see you in, what, an hour?"  
  
"OK" A pause. "Jack, its good to hear your voice again."  
  
He swallowed. "Its good to hear you too, Kate."  
  
PART II  
  
Kate put the receiver down and turned her chair so that she could look out the window. She'd known he wasn't dead. She would have heard if he had been killed. But almost a year of silence: after the first few months it was as if he were dead. Her life was busy. She made it busier, and after a while she missed him less and less as the huge space he had occupied in her life got smaller and smaller. She put it aside and kept going and gradually became open to the possibility that maybe someone else could be to her what Jack used to be.  
  
What was uncanny was that she really had been thinking about him, one of those unbidden memories of him that strangely surfaced every now and then had popped into her mind. They'd been at a ballgame and he'd taken the corner of a napkin and dipped it in his beer and protectively wiped the mustard off her cheek. Smiling at her he'd said "I can't have my Kate covered I condiments". She'd laughed, saying "No, but I can smell like a brewery", and he had kissed her forehead and put his arm around her and she'd rested her head on his shoulder. It was just warm enough, sitting in the sun, and she'd volunteered to score the rest of the game in his program. That way he wouldn't have to move that arm and she could stay there, close to him, and feel his heartbeat and smell his "Jack" smell. Plus, she could still watch the game.  
  
"Please God" she said silently to herself, "Please let him be ok. Just let him be ok."  
  
She decided to tell her father that she had plans to "see a friend". And then she'd check her make-up and brush her hair and pull herself together.  
  
He got to the restaurant first and took a table towards the back, away from the long bar in front and the TVs. No conscious thought. He just automatically selected the table where his back would be up against a brick wall and he had a good view of who was coming and going, and of the doorway to the kitchen. It was second nature, at this point; closer to an instinct. He was more alert than ever these days, just noticing things other people would never see, his eyes regularly surveying his surroundings, listening for a sound that didn't belong. He had to be especially careful now. Word was that Hector had a hefty contract out on him, so hefty that Tony was calling him the "$250,000 man".  
  
He saw her come in. She walked towards the back of the restaurant with that confident, graceful way of hers, looking for him from face to face. He stood to greet her, coming out of the safety of the corner, feeling nervous and stiff and awkward. She was blonder than he remembered, and other heads turned as she moved towards him, still not seeing. Then she locked on him, and a smile lit up her entire face. She was close enough so he could see her eyes, and they were bright, happy...happy just to see him?  
  
She quickly moved into his arms and hugged him tightly. He held her to him and, closing his eyes for once, he buried his face in her hair. Her perfume was the same, holding her felt the same, and yet everything was different. He was so different; it was a different world. Everything was the same, and yet nothing was the same. He wondered, for a split second, how could that be? Yet he remembered her, not just with his mind but also with all his senses. It was truly Kate. Here was this person that, for so long, had only existed in his memory. Now she'd come back to life.  
  
He kissed her cheek and pulled away so he could see her face. She was still smiling but the tears were ready to spill out of her eyes.  
  
"Kate"  
  
"I'm fine, it's just...I'm just glad to see you, that's all..."  
  
"Come sit" He handed her his handkerchief. Miracle of miracles, he had one, unused.  
  
To give her some time he asked what she wanted and, when the waitress came over, seeing her nametag said "Mercedes", he slipped easily into Spanish and ordered for her and got himself another Corona.  
  
"When did you get back?" Kate asked. "Or should I ask you that? Why don't you just tell me what you can."  
  
"No, its ok, the operation is over. Did you see anything on the news about the arrest of a drug dealer, a guy by the name of Ramon Salazar, a little over two weeks ago?"  
  
"There was a lot in the papers about it. I think he was from Columbia, or Mexico? I read a couple of the stories. He sounded awful, ruthless." She looked surprised. "Was that you, Jack?"  
  
"Yes, and you're right. He was absolutely ruthless."  
  
"But why would you be making a drug arrest? I thought..."  
  
"It was a joint operation with DEA. We wanted information on his ties to terrorists. DEA wanted to get him for his drug operations, which are enormous. The drug dealers and the terrorists work together all the time, they have constant contacts with each other."  
  
"So did you find out what you needed to know?"  
  
Jack took a long drink from his beer. "We're still questioning him. He's a tough nut to crack," he answered mildly. "We'll get there."  
  
Kate looked away. She had seen Jack "question" people. One of them...  
"Its not like that this time, Kate" he said quietly. "I don't have to be like I was then. Its not like we only have a couple of minutes or a million people are going to die. He's got a lawyer with him, at least most of the time. That's part of the problem. I can't touch him." After a pause, his voice hardened. "Wouldn't work with Ramon anyway. He'd enjoy showing me he could take as much as I could dish out." As much as he had dished out on me, Jack thought to himself.  
  
He shifted in his chair and changed the subject. "How about you? he asked. "How have you been?"  
  
Kate smiled at him. "I'm good, Jack. Busy, but good. I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, for work. We had a major acquisition, of a British company, last month. They make something exciting called "industrial solvents". We closed the deal about a month ago, so now I won't be traveling so much, until the next time. And I've been teaching International Law at UCLA. I really like working with the students. I'd like to do more teaching, I think. And then I was named to the Board of the museum. So it's been busy, as I said. How's Kim? I haven't spoken to her in weeks".  
  
Listening to him answer gave her the chance to really see him. He was much thinner, as if he'd been sick recently, maybe fifteen pounds lighter, and it showed on his spare frame. He had a deep tan; he must have spent long hours outdoors. And he looked his age now, the last of any boyish softness gone. More lines: mature, serious. There was also something different about his eyes that she couldn't put a name to. He was quietly proud of his daughter but amused, too, at the growing up that had happened while he was away.  
  
"I'm surprised you're not staying with her."  
  
Jack looked at the fork he was fiddling with. "Dad's little girl has grown up. I had the feeling that my presence would, shall we say, cramp her style? So I got a place in one of those suite hotels. I'll stay there until I figure out what to do next. Most of my stuff seems to have taken up permanent residence in her basement, anyway."  
  
And then the obvious, easy things to say were said, and there was an awkward silence. Kate noticed Jack's eyes flick restlessly about the restaurant: the front, then the back, the bar, the kitchen, and back again. He was on alert, looking or listening for something. Then in a moment he was back with her.  
  
"Ramon Salazar has a brother, Hector," he said, knowing she'd noticed his distraction. "He wants to do a little payback at my expense. So you see" he gave her his wicked, sly smile "I'm still a dangerous guy to be around."  
  
"I know. It still doesn't bother me."  
  
He was quiet, and then asked, "How is your sister, Kate? Do you still get up to see her so often?"  
Now it was her turn to pause and collect her thoughts.  
  
Kate shrugged "Not so much since I lost my escort. And my travel schedule for work didn't help."  
  
When they were together, after Marie was sentenced, Kate had wanted to see her every visiting day, about once a month. So Jack would take the day off and drive her to the Federal women's prison about four hours away. At first she argued that she was capable of going alone but he was persistent and ended up taking her, so she wouldn't have to be alone. Sometimes they drove up the night before and stayed overnight in a nearby town, having what Jack insisted on calling "motel sex" and eating in truck stops and diners. In the days before each trip she'd become increasingly tense and unhappy, snippy and dissatisfied with him and with everyone else around her. Jack's response was to become more patient with her. He would try to bribe her into a good mood with small treats (banana milkshakes from her favorite ice cream stand were particularly effective) or by giving her luxurious back rubs at the end of the day. When the overwhelming sadness and bewilderment of losing her sister was too much for her he would just hold her, telling her softly that he loved her and that everything would be all right. Sometimes she would fall asleep while he held her. Usually they would end up making love.  
  
On visiting day Jack would walk in with her, his badge and his position doing wonders. Kate shamelessly took full advantage of not having to stand in the long lines, of sitting in a quiet, private room while she waited for Marie's turn in the visiting area, away from the harassed grandmothers and aunts bringing tired, cranky and confused children to see the mothers they hardly remembered. Then Jack would leave her and go address the mounds of paperwork he brought with him, or work at his laptop in the car until she was done.  
  
It usually didn't take long. At first Marie would hardly speak to her and when she did talk she was full of accusations, scorn and anger, seething with hatred. She'd ask Kate if she was still with "that butcher" and asked how she liked sleeping with a paid assassin, a murderer, a man who had tortured her own sister. Kate would stay calm for as long as she could, trying not to hear the venom, trying to talk to Marie about their childhood, when they lived in London, their mother, anything else. When she couldn't take it any longer she would leave, Marie's threats about what would happen to the country "the next time", about what would happen to their father, about what was going to happen to Kate, would echo in her brain back through all the gates and out with her into the hot glare of the parking lot. She hated it but by then she'd be crying...at least the first few times she would cry...and Jack would be there to hold her again as she sobbed out her disappointment and hurt into his chest. He never said very much, but would just let her grieve. He knew something about the process himself. She'd usually fall asleep for a while on the way back to LA, the jazz CDs they'd brought playing quietly. And the next month they would do it all over again.  
  
"You know" Kate said as they talked about all this "its strange but those were some of the best times, the best conversations, we ever had, in that car going back and forth to Marie."  
  
"I know, I was thinking the same thing. Why do you think that was?"  
  
"Maybe it was because you'd turn off your cell phone," she said dryly.  
  
"Maybe it was the motel sex" he responded, laughing.  
  
That was when she realized how tired he looked, and that what she'd seen in his eyes before was sadness, because when he laughed his whole face brightened and what she'd seen around his eyes went away.  
  
He wasn't like she remembered him being, the way he usually was, when he came back from an assignment. She remembered him as quiet, yes, but also relieved; satisfied, in some way, content that he had accomplished something. There was always a pride in him, even when the mission itself was less than a full success. She didn't sense any of that now. Just weariness, except when they talked about the past. Occasionally his humor would surface with a dry remark, but then it would fade. There were things on his mind he wasn't talking about, that he didn't want to talk about. Well, that had certainly been true before. Jack had always had things on his mind he couldn't or wouldn't talk about. . But this was deeper and, she sensed, very personal.  
  
Their food came. She noticed that after a few bites he basically pushed it around on his plate, but ordered himself another beer. Jack cleared his throat.  
  
"Which of us" he finally said "is going to ask the other first?" He was arranging the French fries in neat rows amidst the ketchup, looking down at his creation. She smiled to herself at his embarrassment: he wanted to know, but he couldn't bring himself to ask her directly. Maybe he had something he needed to tell her, too.  
  
"I have a friend in London" she began. "He's a stockbroker. His name is Richard. He's divorced. He has two daughters. The older one, Sophie, thinks she might want to go to college in the States, so they're all coming to visit me when her school term is over. I'll take them up to see Berkley and Stanford. And they also want to see the Grand Canyon and all the sights, so I'll be playing tour director" She hesitated, and then added "When we're together, its great, but we're taking it slowly. The divorce happened a while ago, but it was messy. And then there's this horrible distance. Phone calls just don't do it."  
  
There was no reaction. Then he looked up at her and asked, "Do you love him, Kate?" Not looking away this time, just waiting quietly. But listening, listening.  
  
"It could go that way. I admire and respect him. He's a good man, Jack"  
  
"Now you're going to tell me I'd like him."  
  
"I think" she said slowly "that given the rules of these things, neither of us owes the other an explanation, do we?"  
  
"No, we don't. You certainly don't owe me one. But Kate" he looked away "Its just hard, you know? I mean, I know what I've been doing, and I know what's fair and I've been gone a long time...its just hard for me to think about you with someone else. Even after all this time. I've got absolutely no right to feel this way, but it bothers me."  
  
Kate reached across the table and held his hand for a moment. "It's complicated, because we never got to the point of hating each other. You got us out of it before that happened." He squeezed her hand, and pulled away. "And what about you?" she asked him.  
  
He shrugged. "There was someone. Her name is Claudia. She's still there. She's in a dangerous situation, a bad situation." He looked up at her. He looked her in the eye. "She lived with Hector but we...we got involved with each other too. I promised her I'd help her get away from him, from that whole way of life. She and her family. But things didn't go the way I planned. DEA got impatient, and I had to bring Ramon in before I could get things set up to take care of Claudia too. So I had to leave without explaining to her, and without her." He paused, adding; "She probably thinks I was just feeding her a line. God knows enough other people have done that to her."  
  
"And how do you feel about her now?"  
  
"I don't know," he said after a pause. "I told her I loved her, but I don't know how I feel now. Mostly I feel...like I let her down. She risked her life to be with me, Kate, just so we could be together when Hector..." he almost said "wasn't looking" but he stopped himself. "What I think now is that I've got to figure out a way to get her away from him, if that's still what she wants. And then...then we'll see. We never talked much about anything beyond that."  
  
"Well, that sounds like you, at least." Jack looked up quickly at the sharpness in her voice.  
  
Kate smiled at him, a little sadly. "I don't want to argue Jack. I don't want to start up on you again. But don't you understand this is difficult for me too? When did I make you feel like you were just some book I'd closed and put up on the shelf? I don't think you ever get really finished with someone you've loved. At least I don't. So yes, it bothers me too. It won't kill me, not now. But I'm not at the point yet where I can just be happy for you if you have someone. Not even after a year." Even as she spoke Kate searched her mind. He wanted to hear her say something here. What was the thing he needed her to tell him? Was he looking for her permission, or for her forgiveness, or did he just need to hear that he could do what needed to be done?  
"I know you Jack Bauer," she said finally. "I know you can do anything you decide to do, anything you're determined to do. I know you want to do what you promised, and that you'll move heaven and earth, if necessary, to do it. If anybody can help her, you'll do it."  
  
Jack sat back in his chair for a moment, and closed his eyes. In a little while, after he had collected himself, he said "Well, I wish I had the same confidence in my miraculous abilities as you do." But then he added quietly "Thank you, anyway for the vote of confidence."  
  
They finished their coffee, some how comfortable with each other again, as if the air had cleared.  
  
They decided to take a walk to a bookstore that was a few blocks away. He needed to replace his copy of Great Expectations, which had finally fallen apart in Columbia, or Mexico, or wherever he had been.  
  
"I thought you'd have it memorized by now" she teased him.  
  
"No, close but...remember that science fiction story, when the people in the underground have to memorize books because they've been banned? When I read that story I decided I wanted to be the guy who memorized Great Expectations because it was shorter than David Copperfield.  
  
"David Copperfield was already taken, anyway."  
  
"Touché. Come on, I'll walk you to your car."  
  
They turned up the dark street. Since his hands were thrust deep into his pants pockets, she took his arm. The car was several blocks away and they walked in silence, both of them thinking but comfortable in the silence. He walked her around to the driver's side and, turning to her, Jack noticed a lock of her hair had come undone. He came closer to her, and reached up to tuck it back in place.  
  
"Kate, I'm glad I called you. I almost didn't."  
  
"Why?"  
  
He hesitated for a moment, before answering. Why not try the truth, for a change?  
"Because I was afraid that you wouldn't want to see me. Because I thought...I still think...that you'd be better off if you didn't see me again, ever. But I needed to see you because..."  
  
He never finished the sentence. Without thinking it through ahead of time, without thinking much at all, he pulled her to him and kissed her. A long, deep kiss, which, after a moment of just accepting, she returned, her eyes closed. "This is Jack," her mind said. "He's here, he's in there somewhere, it's him." They paused for a moment, but then he was back, cupping her face with his hands, holding her, trying to show her, trying to tell her, trying to make her understand what he felt. Because if she understood it maybe he could, too.  
  
And then, just as abruptly, he pulled away from her. She opened her eyes. He was leaning against the car door, facing it, his head resting on his folded arms.  
  
"Jack, what's wrong?" she asked, alarmed.  
  
"I'm sorry Kate. I didn't mean to do that. I don't have any business doing that."  
  
"Jack, look at me. Look at me." When he turned, she smiled, gently brushing the hair out of his eyes. "Do I look angry?"  
  
"I just told you in there..."  
  
"You told me there's someone who's important to you that you're worried about. I told you there's someone who's important to me, too. It's all right, Jack. We're not horrible people because of that. Just leave it at that for now. And try not to think so much. You don't have to figure everything out right now, ok?"  
  
"No, I guess I don't".  
  
After a moment she asked him something that had been puzzling her. "Is this about us, or is this about where you've been?"  
  
He thought for a moment. "I think its all mixed up together for me. So much of what happened with us – of what I did – "  
  
"No, we both agreed, Jack".  
  
"No, Kate" he said firmly, "what I did to us, because it was me...was also part of that. I had to make it be over with us. Or else I couldn't have gone. And there were things I had to do there that couldn't have any connection with you."  
  
"This time, that much more than any other time you were away?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
He stood up straight and pushed his hands back down in his pockets.  
  
"Can I call you again?"  
"Yes, Jack, I'd like that." He opened the car door for her. She climbed in, started it and rolled down the window.  
  
"I'm glad you called. It was great to see you again. But please, I can't call you. It has to come from you."  
  
"I understand"  
  
"And you won't wait two weeks to do it?"  
  
He smiled at her "Not a chance." But then he was serious.  
  
"Kate, when you get home tonight, put the car right into the garage. Don't leave it parked in the driveway. And close the garage door before you get out of the car. Be sure you put the security system on too, both the one in the car and the one for the house."  
  
"I will. Don't worry. I know what you're saying. But I want you to promise me something, too."  
  
"If I can."  
  
"Promise me you'll go home and get some sleep. You look exhausted, Jack, like you haven't slept in days."  
  
"That bad, huh?"  
  
"Yes, that bad. Don't turn on ESPN to get the sports scores, don't start channel surfing, don't have another beer, just go home and get some sleep."  
  
He looked off to his left for a moment and then turned back to her.  
  
"I just have to make one stop, pick up some shaving cream, but I promise, then I'll go home."  
  
His reward was her smile again.  
  
"Good. Bye, Jack"  
  
"Bye, Kate".  
  
He stepped back, watched her pull away, and headed back to his car.  
  
PART III  
  
He headed towards the bar, just driving, taking her advice and trying not to think and analyze it all out, just enjoying the feeling of being relieved. The evening had gone so much better than he could have ever imagined. They could still talk to each other, at least about some things. He'd even managed to talk to her about Claudia. What was it Kate had said? That he'd figure it out. She wasn't just saying it, either. Of course, she had no idea what was involved – what was he going to do, steal a helicopter? But the confidence that she had in him, that she still had in him, despite everything. And she seemed to have enjoyed seeing him, too. At least she didn't hate him. She hadn't forgotten.  
  
And when he kissed her. God, why had he stopped? He was aroused just thinking about it, like he was a teenager again; back full circle to the way he'd felt before he called her, in the office. And it had been so long since he'd had a conversation, an honest conversation, with anyone.  
  
Well, wait a minute. His brain stopped him. Honest? What, exactly, are you doing now? Going for "shaving cream"?? Where are you going? And what are you going to do when you get there? Ok, so you won't have a beer when you get "home". You're just going to go and stick a needle in your arm.  
  
It didn't make the rest of it go away, exactly, but he started thinking more about what he hadn't told her than about what he had. And that made him admit that, if anything, Claudia was the easy issue to talk about, and the rest of it was worse, much worse.  
  
And why was he so anxious to talk to her now anyway? Did he really want them to get back together? Was that even a remote possibility? Did he think they could be "just friends"? Not if his reaction to "Richard the stockbroker" was any gauge. So what was all this interest for? So they could go through it all again, like the last time? So he could turn around and walk away from her again? And who would she be better off with? This guy, or some other guy, or "Jack, the drug addict"? Even up against a player to be named later, this was a no-brainer, he lost; it wasn't even a close decision.  
  
He parked the SUV in the darkness down the street from the bar and stared the truth he most feared in the face. It wasn't connected to Kate. He was thinking about her right now to avoid thinking about this other problem. Ramon was not going to talk. For almost three weeks he'd been pretending and hoping that particular little reality would go away. But it wouldn't stay hidden any longer. It didn't matter if he and Chase went up to that prison every day for the next month or for the next six months. He knew Ramon like he used to know himself. And that meant that what he was going to do now, and what he had done...he closed his eyes, willing those thoughts to stay back a little longer.  
  
He slipped his badge into the glove compartment and locked it. Inside he caught the bar tender's eye and got the nod to head to the room in the back. He told the guys at the door he was packing, reached behind, unclipped his gun and handed it over. They didn't bother to pat him down. Not a good sign; they recognized him as a regular. They just waited for him to reach down and get the second gun that was strapped to his ankle, and to reach into his jacket pocket for the halo knife.  
  
Inside he told them what he wanted and counted out ten crisp, new hundred dollar bills, laying them on the table. He preferred to get it in liquid form, less of a hassle, but that was hard to find so he had to settle for the powder. They might have the liquid in a couple of weeks, he should check back.  
  
"'Till the next time" the guy at the desk said, smiling as if they were through .  
"Not so fast" said Jack. "I'm paying this kind of money, I want to know what I'm buying." The guy nodded. This was fair. He signaled to one of the other men who was just standing around, and the second one quickly set up a short line for Jack on a piece of glass that was laying on the top of the table.  
  
Jack rolled another bill, leaned over and snorted half the line. Then he did it again into the other side. The hit took a second or two, but he could definitely feel it starting to kick in along the way. It felt like it traveled right from his eyeballs to the back of his brain, the way you feel a shot of single malt as it travels down, increasing the anticipation of the glow once it hit your stomach. It was a good thing he'd tested it. It was stronger, less diluted by powdered milk or whatever they were using, than what he was used to. He'd have to be careful until his body made the adjustment. The guy behind the table smiled again.  
  
"Just trying to keep our customers satisfied". Jack had made him a happy guy. He'd bought almost twenty percent more than he had the last time, which meant that if he wasn't turning some of it over retail, he was using more. They always told themselves they were buying more so there'd be a longer time between shopping trips, especially these professional guys, but he knew how that went. Jack would be back in a week, ten days tops.  
  
"Come back soon."  
  
On the way back through the bar Jack noticed a girl he hadn't seen on the way in. She looked at him and smiled. Was it the one he'd gone upstairs with the last time? She hadn't been that bad and for a split second he thought "Why not?" but then he remembered and smiled at her and kept moving. She turned and started talking to somebody else at the bar. She wasn't broken hearted at the brush off but it was another bad sign. She remembered him too. Definitely time to make a change.  
  
He pulled out carefully. He'd have to really watch his driving now. The last thing he needed was being pulled over with a blood alcohol of, what, .06 or .08, and the pupils in his eyes half dilated because he had a major buzz on and a thousand dollars worth of heroin in the car. Even his badge wouldn't get him out of that kind of trouble.  
A thought came to him from out of nowhere as he headed "home". Or maybe it was because he was high. Did Kate know, he wondered idly, that when you killed someone with a bullet to the head that sometimes...that was why it was important to stand back a bit...you wanted to angle the bullet down...another definition of "blowback". And he'd done that for Ramon and for Hector, what was the count up to now? He'd lost track after twelve because he didn't want to know the real number.  
  
And he couldn't even blame this mess on someone from Langley or Division. No, he was the author of this particular debacle. He was the one who, realizing that the drug dealers lead back directly to the terrorists, had identified the Salazar cartel for infiltration, had sold the idea up the food chain in CTU, and then to the DEA. He was the one who figured out the best way to approach it, how long it would take to gain their confidence, what the cover should be, how to maintain communications – his hand was on it all. He knew what the Salazars did that they called "just business" and he knew, going in, what the guy they put inside would be doing on a day-to-day basis. He knew. And he still claimed the job for himself.  
  
He knew it would be the end for him and Kate. And the look on her face when she realized that this was not some assignment that had come down from on high, but was his brainchild, his way of making his exit. She'd said congratulations, he'd figured out one way to solve two problems. He could use it as an excuse to move out and he could get himself killed, both at the same time, how economical. She was furious but she was also deeply, deeply hurt because he was walking away from the life they had together and from their love for each other. Just walking away.  
  
He pulled into the parking garage underneath his building. She was right; he was exhausted. He couldn't shut his mind down anymore on his own. Everything kept swirling around in a confusing muddle of random thoughts and emotions and things from the past and things that were happening right now and he couldn't keep it straight anymore, what emotion belonged with which thought and what the difference was between them anyway. And underneath it all was the fear, like the proverbial 800 lb. gorilla in the room that nobody would talk about, the fear that he'd never get Ramon to talk and so all of it, all of it, had been a total and complete waste. And on top of it all he still had to keep his secrets to himself and play them all...Kim and Tony and Michelle and that jerk Chapelle and now Kate too. He was still undercover and he'd be that way no matter where he was. Not an iota of honesty or truth in anything he said or did. Just like a junkie.  
  
He went upstairs, let himself in, turned on a light, got a spoon, walked quickly over to the bed, to the nightstand, and sat down, pulling the bag out of his jacket. His hands were trembling and he needed to fix in the worst way. He'd just waited too long, it was too long, even after the line he'd run in the bar, he hadn't paid attention to what his body was telling him. He couldn't last for twelve hours anymore; ten was more like it. The jacket and tie and shirt were off, he kicked his shoes off and got to work. Heating the powder in the spoon until it melted and drawing it up into the syringe and making sure there weren't any air bubbles, wrapping his arm and then finding the vein and easing it in and sending it home.  
  
The feeling of lightness and the way the tension in his shoulders just disappeared, like falling asleep in a hammock or on the beach, lying in the sun, just floating along, was almost immediate. He leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes. No thoughts, no problems very soon, just drifting and quiet. No struggle to keep the things he didn't want to think about or remember at bay and under control. He could have a nice, dreamless sleep now, nothing to think about or worry about or regret. His last conscious thought was that at least he'd done what he'd promised Kate he'd do.  
  
PART IV  
  
Kate padded back into the kitchen on her way to the study, picking up the tea she'd set to brew while she changed into flannel pj's and a t- shirt. Setting down the teapot – she was used to loose tea now – she turned on her laptop and settled comfortably into the oversized leather chair that faced the desk. She'd had other plans for tonight, of course. She had lecture notes to prepare for her next class and committee minutes to review and some thank you notes to write. And she'd wanted to send Richard an e- mail, just to answer the one she'd gotten from him this morning and fill him in on the arrangements she'd made for their visit. And then Jack called, and she'd put all that aside to see him.  
  
Of course, he would show up now, she thought with some annoyance. Here she had gotten Jack down to a small part of her mind, and to no part of her everyday life. She'd worked it through and made peace with it and kept her life going. The constant pain of missing him had settled down to a low ache, and then after more time it only appeared sporadically, when a song or a remark made her think of him. The emptiness he'd left in her house gradually filled in with people and events that had no connection to him. Things were working out, she was enjoying the life she'd built for herself post-Jack.  
  
And then he reappeared from out of the blue and she had to think about him all over again. Just his voice on the phone re-opened issues that had been closed for months. She felt angry at how he could blithely pop in and out of her life without the slightest understanding of his ability to totally disrupt her world. And now he was back. So, if that made her so angry, why had she said he could call her again, and that she'd like to see him again? She knew the answer.  
  
He made her stop and turn her head in his direction, and consider, just because he was Jack, and he was standing there, looking for her.  
  
Well, "blithely" was the wrong word. The simple act of calling her had clearly been a struggle for him. He told her that he almost hadn't called. Did that hesitation come from embarrassment, or guilt, or did it come from the fear that, if they did see each other the fact that there was nothing left between them would be confirmed. Just good manners and politeness hiding a basic disinterest and indifference. She could imagine many reasons not to call her. What was strong enough in him to overcome all that, and for him to risk experiencing the rejection that he clearly expected and dreaded?  
  
Why had he come looking for her?  
  
She thought about him surveying the room, his quick glances back down the street when they waited to cross an intersection. When they walked together he had quietly made sure she was on his left side, leaving his other hand and side free. That way he could reach back quickly to the gun she knew was always clipped to the waistband of his pants, in the back, underneath his jacket. And then she knew part of the answer.  
  
The Salazars were coming for him, and he expected it to happen soon. That was part of the reason he hadn't stayed at Kim's, of course. Just a little more distance but it increased her separation from him and therefore it increased her safety. So contacting Kate now meant he'd decided he better not wait any longer because the window of opportunity for seeing her was closing, perhaps for good. Kate was surprised at how much this thought disturbed her. He had calmly assessed the danger he was in and had seen it was considerable. And so he'd decided that bringing things involving Kate to some final resolution was in order. He was tying up the loose threads, making sure there was nothing left undone. Just in case.  
  
But at the end of the evening, it hadn't felt like he was trying to say good-bye to her. Quite the opposite. So had he gone into tonight thinking one thing, and come out of it thinking something else?  
  
She needed to pull her own thoughts together about how he was. She needed to resolve her impressions of him and reach some conclusions on her own. And that train of thought led her in a direction that was even more disturbing. If he was in as much danger as he seemed to think he was, there wasn't anything she could do about it. Jack would either handle it or he wouldn't; she had no role in that. But this other thing was nagging at her. What she had asked for, simply, was to know that he was ok. So what did she know?  
  
She knew she didn't like how he looked and she didn't like how he sounded and she didn't like how differently he'd acted, different from a hundred other evenings she'd spent with him, whether before an assignment or after an assignment or just at the conclusion of a normal day. She could tick off the things that had registered with her very easily, without much effort. Inadvertently or unconsciously he had laid all the clues at her feet. Or, at least, they were right there in front of her, obvious and glaring, if only she took the time and the trouble to see.  
  
Like how much he was drinking. Not with any sense of fun, or to relax, but in a steady, uninterrupted, constant stream, the way people drink when they basically want to just get drunk. She couldn't say he couldn't hold it, or that she wished she'd gotten the car keys away from him. But she'd never seen him knock-off an entire six-pack in a little less than an hour, with barely a pause to come up for air. He seemed so used to it, like there was nothing remarkable about what he was doing, like it wasn't anything he hadn't done for a long series of nights.  
  
And then there was this awful tiredness about him. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen the effect of him working for hours on end. She could easily remember Jack putting in sixteen or eighteen hour days for weeks at a time, with no breaks during the weekends, under enormous pressure, with barely enough time to take a shower or change his clothes. She'd seen him fall asleep while he was taking his shoes off, or when she walked across the kitchen to make coffee or, once, in the time it took her to turn off the bathroom light and climb into bed beside him. Hs whole world would narrow down into an intense, unrelenting focus on his work, on solving the problem, on putting a solution together.  
  
No, this wasn't just lack of sleep, although she thought that was part of it. He seemed defeated, as if he'd been in a battle about something important to him, and had finally...just given up. And in her experience Jack never gave up on anything. If he hit an obstacle he'd try to get over it by sheer force of will. And if that didn't work he'd figure out a way around it, or decide he could just leave it there, and get to where he needed to be some other way. Even when they'd broken up, when they decided it just wasn't going to work (and, despite what he'd said, she could have sworn she was in the room making that decision too), he couldn't let go of it. He'd still keep coming back, not able to make a final end to it, until the time for trying had run out, and he'd had to go away.  
  
Kate thought back to what he'd said about Ramon Salazar. How had he put it? That Ramon was a "tough nut to crack". Hadn't he been at that very thing for close to a year? What more was there for Jack to try and do? If there had been some tangible results, something to show for all this, would Jack's voice have been so hard? Would he be wishing so obviously that he could just beat the information he needed out of the man?  
  
And this defeat had shaken him profoundly; to the point that he questioned whether he could do other things he needed or wanted to do. To the point that he needed to hear Kate, of all people, say that she believed in him, and that he was capable of doing whatever he'd promised he would do. (And, by the way, was this Claudia his 'girlfriend', or was she his 'lover', and what did that make Hector, anyway?). In all her experience of him, had Kate ever known Jack to openly question himself that way? Sheer, dogged determination had gotten him through so much. But this defeat had stunned him in some way, and left him confused about himself.  
  
And finally, there was that awful, quiet sadness in his eyes. Kate remembered she'd seen that look before when he lost someone he'd worked with, when another agent was killed. Sometimes it was an agent he'd trained or, even worse, someone Jack had picked for an assignment. She remembered one night in particular, when he had been bitingly sarcastic and abrupt and generally impossible. They had one of those nasty, bitter arguments that ranged over so many separate grievances and topics that neither of them knew what they were actually arguing about. He'd gone out for a run around eleven and she was relieved to see him leave the house. But when she woke two hours later and his side of the bed was still empty, she'd gotten worried. She wondered if she should follow the procedure he'd drilled into her head and call the night number at the office.  
  
She walked into the study, the very room she was sitting in now, and turned on the light. Jack was sitting on the sofa in the dark, still in his running clothes, holding his head in his hands. He looked up at her and the tears were streaming down his face. So he'd finally told her they'd found out that afternoon that Larry Baker was dead. He'd been on an assignment in North Korea that Jack had sent him on and he'd been killed. Not killed outright, either. They'd recorded it. And they'd sent the DVD to CTU addressed to Jack. And suspecting what was on it he'd taken it up to his office and watched it alone, the entire two and a half hours. They even provided an English language voice-over, just so what was happening on the screen would be absolutely clear. Jack wouldn't turn it over to anyone else when he was done because he didn't want anybody else see Larry go through that. Jack was his boss – it was his job to see it – but he refused to let anyone else see it. He sent Michelle screen caps of the faces of the guys who seemed to be in charge, so the work to identify them could begin. He couldn't destroy it because one day they might need it for evidence. So he put it in an evidence bag and sealed it and put it in the safe in his office.  
  
Kate watched him as he told her all this, after he'd stopped shaking and calmed down enough to talk. And that night and for days thereafter there had been a look in his eyes that reminded her of how he'd looked tonight. All the responsibility, all the grief, all the anger, and all the blame he assigned to himself for Larry's death was in that look  
  
Her tea had grown cold so she went back into the kitchen to make a fresh pot. It was after midnight and she'd started this two hours earlier, but she was wide-awake so there was no point in trying to go to sleep now. How much more did she really need or want to know? And given what she already knew, what, if anything, was she supposed to do about it?  
  
She wasn't his wife. They didn't live together. They weren't going out together. In fact, both of them had commitments to other people that, in the hierarchy of things, probably took precedence over any obligations of residual friendship they had to each other. If he was at the point where he needed professional help, and Kate thought it was a good guess that he did, she didn't have the training or the emotional distance from him to provide it. And you'd have to hold hot coals to his feet to get Jack to admit that he was in over his head, and couldn't take care of whatever problems he had on his own.  
  
She sat back down at her desk and idly typed the name "Ramon Salazar" into the search line of her browser. It returned over a hundred references: Ramon had rated stories not just in the L.A.Times and the San Francisco papers, but in the east coast papers as well: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal were there, as were numerous papers in Mexico, Columbia and Panama, if her rudimentary Spanish was close to being right. Several publications had run background pieces on how Ramon had started out, how he had eliminated rivals in his immediate area one by one, how his operations had grown over the last five years, how much he was probably worth (well over a billion dollars), how they got the drugs into the country.  
  
There was a particularly interesting chart about how Ramon's operations had prospered over the last year. There had been a conflict, a drug gang mini-war, which had involved increasingly sophisticated operations by Ramon's thugs. The conflict had spilled over and was affecting the civilian population who had nothing to do with the drug trade: innocent people who were just trying to live their lives were getting caught in the crossfire. And there were numerous retaliations against those politicians or public figures that tried to break the web of corruption that protected the Salazars from the law and from the honest policemen and jurists who were left.  
  
One particularly notable assassination had happened just three months before. In broad daylight a convoy of heavily armed limousines carrying the most prominent reform politician in the country was ambushed. The article noted that the attack had been carried out commando style, with almost military precision, and involved the use of rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons the Salazars had never used before. The explosion of a delivery van in front stopped the convoy, and they couldn't pull out and head in the opposite direction because a paneled truck blocked that escape route. Salazar's men then appeared on the roofs of the surrounding buildings and covered the trapped cars with automatic weapons fire until everyone, the politician and his twelve bodyguards, was dead. The various reports differed but it appeared that at least three and maybe as many as six civilians had been killed as well. There were more stories of the same kind of thing and speculation about whether this incident, and others like it which had occurred recently, meant that the drug dealers were about to break out of their current roles and become full fledged "warlords", who controlled the civil administration of whole states.  
  
Kate looked at the screen for several minutes without really seeing it. And a question formed in her mind. If you were Ramon Salazar, and you had a tool at your disposal like Jack Bauer, what would you have him doing? He wouldn't be the guy who laundered the money through Switzerland or the Grand Cayman Islands. You wouldn't waste him on sneaking a few hundred bags of cocaine into Texas. She looked at the words "commando style" and "military precision" again. This had happened almost three months ago. Jack had returned two, no more than three weeks ago.  
  
And then she knew why Jack had come looking for her.  
  
She thought about how deeply he loved his daughter.  
  
She thought about how much he loved Charles Dickens and how he could recite whole pages from his books, making up different voices and accents for the different characters: Yorkshire and upper-class London and cockney.  
  
She thought about him patiently trying to coach the pathetic CTU softball team, and how much he wanted to beat the FBI team once, just once.  
  
She thought about how proud she was of him, his courage and his dedication to his job, and of all the times he had pushed himself and sacrificed himself and offered himself up for his work, without thinking if there was any reward in it.  
  
She thought about how gentle and kind and thoughtful and protective he was when she had needed him, and how she could count on him to be her rock.  
  
She thought about his hands and his smile and how she'd felt when he'd kissed her tonight, like she was the most precious thing on earth to him and he was sorry, so sorry, for it all, and so ashamed that he couldn't face her.  
  
She thought how much she wanted to sleep with him again and wake up with him again and how much she just liked being with him and how when he came home he would call her name as soon as he stepped in the door. And he would keep calling her, looking for her from one room to the next, still calling her, because he had to find her to be safe and whole.  
  
And then it was her turn to hold her head in her hands and cry her eyes out. Because she knew he was hurt, and he was in such pain, because of what he had done.  
  
. 


End file.
